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The evening was supposed to be peaceful. At least, that had been Claire’s original plan. After finally convincing Chris to attend a family gathering without checking his phone every five minutes, she considered it a small victory. There were no urgent calls, no sudden changes of plans, no reason for either of them to leave early. Just dinner, a few familiar faces, good food, conversation, and the chance to spend a few hours like normal people.
Chris sat across from her at the table with a cup of coffee in his hand, listening to the conversation, although his expression suggested he was far more interested in the dessert sitting on the kitchen counter. Claire knew that look. It always appeared whenever Chris was trying to pretend he wasn’t interested in something he desperately wanted.
“Don’t even try.” she said without taking her eyes off the conversation.
Chris looked at her.
“Try what?”
“Pretend you’re not staring at the cake.”
“I’m not staring.”
Claire glanced at him.
“You are.”
“It’s my cake.”
“That’s exactly why you’re staring at it.”
Chris shook his head, but the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. He didn’t answer. After a moment, he returned to the conversation with the others at the table.
Claire smiled to herself. It was familiar. Almost too familiar. They didn’t need much to know what the other was thinking. Sometimes all it took was a single look. One word. One gesture.
And that was exactly why no one at the table was prepared for what happened a few minutes later.
The conversation turned to vacations and old family trips. Someone mentioned a small guesthouse where they had all stayed many years ago. Claire started talking about the owner, who had a habit of showing up at breakfast at exactly seven in the morning and asking every guest, with incredible seriousness, whether they had slept well.
“And I remember.” Claire said. “That Chris gave him exactly the same answer every single morning.”
Chris raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t remember that.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“What did I say?”
Claire looked at him with that familiar spark in her eyes.
“Phenomenal.”
Chris froze. Literally for a second. Then he snorted with laughter. Claire burst out laughing a second later.
No one else at the table had any idea what had just happened.
“What?” one of them asked.
Claire tried to calm down, but the look on Chris’s face certainly wasn’t helping.
“Nothing.” she said.
“No, no. What was so funny about phenomenal?”
Chris turned his head as if the wall had suddenly become extremely interesting.
“Nothing.”
Claire covered her mouth with her hand.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“You’re both laughing.”
“It’s a long story.” Chris said.
“Very long.” Claire added.
And that was enough to make them start laughing again. When Claire finally managed to catch her breath, she rested her elbows on the table.
“Okay. This was… a few years ago.”
Chris gave her a warning look.
“Claire.”
“What?”
“No.”
“But no one’s going to understand it anyway.”
“That’s exactly the point.”
“That makes me want to tell it even more.”
Chris let out a heavy sigh.
“Do you always have to do this?”
“Yes.”
Someone at the table laughed.
“Now I really want to know.”
Claire looked at Chris. For a moment, they exchanged looks like two children deciding whether they should tell their parents the truth.
Chris gave in first.
“We were kids,” he began.
“I was about eight,” Claire corrected him.
“And I was fourteen.”
“So we were kids.”
“You were a kid.”
“You were too.”
“I was not.”
Claire snorted.
“You were fourteen.”
“That was a serious age.”
“Of course it was.”
A few people at the table started laughing, but Chris only shook his head.
“We went to a lake with our parents for a few days.” he continued. “There was a guesthouse there. Small, old building. The rooms had thin walls and wooden floors that creaked with every step.”
“And the owner was really weird.” Claire added.
“He wasn’t weird.”
“He was.”
“He just liked things orderly.”
“Chris, he woke us up at seven in the morning.”
“Because it was seven in the morning.”
“On vacation.”
“That doesn’t mean clocks stop existing.”
Claire rolled her eyes.
“Anyway.” she continued. “One morning, we went down for breakfast. Chris was in a terrible mood.”
“I was tired.”
“Because you stayed up watching TV the night before.”
“You did too.”
“But I wasn’t complaining.”
Chris looked at her.
“You complained for half an hour.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I do.”
“That’s your problem.”
The table erupted in laughter again.
Claire continued.
“The owner walked up to Chris and asked, How did you sleep?”
“And I answered, Good,” Chris said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You said phenomenal.”
Chris closed his eyes.
“Because I was already annoyed by then.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t understand what’s so funny about that.”
Claire stared at him in disbelief.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Chris, you were fourteen, and you looked like you wanted to burn the entire guesthouse down.”
“I did not want to burn it down.”
“You had the face for it.”
“I always have that face.”
Claire tried to suppress a smile for a moment.
“The owner asked you again. Did you sleep well? And you looked at him and said, Phenomenal.”
Chris started laughing.
“Because that’s when you started choking on your juice.”
“Because I couldn’t believe you said it with such a straight face.”
“And then.” Chris continued, shaking his head. “The owner said, That’s wonderful. The weather is phenomenal too.”
Claire immediately doubled over laughing.
“Yes!”
“And for the rest of the week.” Chris continued, “everything was phenomenal.”
“Breakfast? Phenomenal.”
“The weather? Phenomenal.”
“The lake? Phenomenal.”
“The mosquitoes?” Claire asked.
Chris looked at her.
“Phenomenal.”
They both burst out laughing again. The rest of the table watched them with a mixture of amusement and complete confusion.
“That’s it?” someone finally asked.
Claire tried to stop laughing.
“Yep.”
“That’s why one word has made you two laugh for the past fifteen years?”
Chris shrugged.
“Yep.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither do we.” Claire replied.
Chris looked at his sister, and for a moment, they were both silent. That was the thing. It wasn’t really the joke. It wasn’t the guesthouse owner or fourteen-year-old Chris’s ridiculous answer. It was something much simpler.
Back then, they had just been kids.
Claire remembered that trip very clearly. She remembered the lake, the wooden floor, the smell of the old guesthouse, and Chris sitting at the breakfast table every morning with his hair a complete mess, trying to look grown-up and serious. She also remembered laughing so hard that her stomach hurt that day. And Chris remembered something else.
He remembered that Claire had been in a fantastic mood for the rest of the day.